Friday, June 29, 2007

Pennsylvania Land Owner Atlas are now on line! 71 of them from Adams, Allegheny, Armstrong, to Warren, Washington, Wayne and York. These maps are part of a collection of 1200 U. S. County Land Ownership Atlases maps ranging from 1864-1918, across 34 states that were just added at ancestry.com.

Each of the county map books detail the township, town and village showing the location of each landowner's property.

Your great-great grandfather's name may be on one of these maps! Up until now, for the most part, viewing these maps meant a trip to the county's historical society and with a magnifying glass pouring over the hundreds of names printed in small type for each township. The online digitizing of this collection is a tremendous genealogy aid. Not only are the maps online - they are searchable! And, you can zoom in 200%. Within minutes of searching the maps, I found ancestors that I had given up looking for!

The 24/7 Ancestry Family Circle had an excellent suggestion for plugging the township maps into Google Earth and actually seeing what your ancestors' property looks like today!

Shown above is a section of Fairview Township from the 1873 Mercer County, PA Atlas, one of the map sets in the collection. This image was scanned from a hard copy of the maps and is not an image from the online collection.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The Youngwood Historical Museum, located in the historic old railroad building built in 1902, thought a cafe might be a way to revitalize interest in the museum. The permit was turned down. The museum has been open by appointment only since a scandal rocked its board in 2004.